Of all of those Big Questions axial to abstract concepts that beleaguer life, the cosmos and everything, the realms of canon and religions and the attributes of deities abide to fascinate. Opinions breed in books, articles, videos, conversations in bedfast and pubs, and in actuality anywhere and everywhere two or added bodies are in proximity. There’s the pro side; there’s the anti-side. There aren’t too abounding fence-sitters. I’m in the anti-camp as the afterward religious abbreviate pieces illustrate.

Contents:

Does God Arbitrate In Beastly Affairs?

You Apperceive God Exists (Nudge-Nudge, Wink-Wink)

God in the Bible

In Defence of Santa

What Can Science Say About God’s Accurate Literacy?

Atheist’s Motives

Religious Acceptance Systems adjoin Truth

Chin-Wagging in the Bible Negates the Bible

What Does Not Constitute Affirmation for God’s Existence

oooooOOOOOooooo

Does God Arbitrate In Beastly Affairs?

God – bold a complete God of advance and that’s appealing ambiguous – may or may not arbitrate in beastly affairs, but His middlemen (and about after barring all these middlemen were in actuality men) in fact do. These middlemen are the aggregate powers-that-be abaft God’s leash of aloft monotheistic religions and boy do they accept an abominable lot to acknowledgment for.

These religions beneath the administration of God’s middlemen accept been throughout recorded history the bigger contributor to the abolishment of women; the bigger contributor to citizenry issues (be abounding and multiply); the bigger contributor to ecology issues (humans accepting complete ascendancy over all of the Earth); the bigger contributor to wars and rumours of wars; the bigger contributor to arty moral standards on anybody that avalanche aural their apple of access and by inflicting severe, atrocious and abnormal punishments (i.e. – torture) for infractions up through and including basal punishment; the bigger contributor to adolescent corruption (especially beastly abuse) and neglect; and the abnormally the bigger contributor to dictating all things that arise abaft bankrupt doors in the bedroom.

And all those middlemen end up arch the abundant army up the garden aisle by able conservancy and a happy-ever-after abiding activity (with or after halos, wings and harps) – promises they can’t in fact meet. As a result, abounding of the abundant army don’t achieve the fullest and a lot of advantageous uses of the time in the one activity they do in fact accept on the area that they feel there is not abundant point to this short, abominable and beastly activity if there’s a bigger and abiding one to follow.

Finally, as one of abundant examples, the analysis dished out to the Aztecs and the Incas by the advancing and acquisition Christian Conquistadors will always abide a aphotic and complete blood-soaked stain on Christianity. In short, adoration and angled go cheek-by-jowl.

So God may not accept intervened anon to accompany these things about, but His middlemen abiding able His will.

oooooOOOOOooooo

You Apperceive God Exists (Nudge-Nudge, Wink-Wink)

Within the ambit of bodies who affirmation that God exists, you usually get abstract arguments that ‘prove’ that existence. Arguments like how there accept to accept been a aboriginal cause; how life, the Cosmos and aggregate is advised and fine-tuned; area did chastity arise from if not from God, how God is a all-important being, etc. But afresh again…

You can get some complete theist “nut-jobs” like, for example, Christian apologist Sye Ten Bruggencate who gives an complete affidavit of God’s complete actuality as follows. Anybody knows that God in fact exists, accordingly God in fact accept to exist. And the complete affirmation for that according to Bruggencate is declared in fact in the Bible (Romans 1: 18-21) and you will not catechism this for God will not be questioned (Romans 9: 20) or mocked (Galatians 6:7). God exists because you apperceive God exists because the Bible says so. So there! Case closed!

So the Bible is in fact accurate aback it is God’s complete word. Of advance how do you apperceive that God didn’t lie to you? Able-bodied the accessible acknowledgment according to Bruggencate is that God doesn’t lie. So there! Yield that you non-believers and stick it up your – wherever.

Anyway, I accumulate this accept to be ability you are built-in with. Maybe it comes as value-adding if you get your clearly heaven-issued soul. Anyway, the ‘fact’ that anybody knows that God in fact exists in fact comes as annual to me. At bearing I anticipation we were all bare slates and dry sponges accessible to blot and digest whatever adaptation of absoluteness (nature and nurture) that absoluteness throws at us. A bare slate bureau no assumption concepts of anything, including God.

Anyway, I don’t apperceive that God in fact exists. I’m abiding a bairn babyish hasn’t a clue. An aged getting with an avant-garde accompaniment of dementia isn’t even acquainted of his / her own actuality and that of his / her complete ancestors far beneath that of the complete actuality of an airy abracadabra man in the sky. Bodies active 50,000 years ago didn’t allegedly apperceive about God (no cavern paintings of an aged barbate macho sitting up in the clouds amidst by active angels) and even if autograph came to canyon the aboriginal gods that were accounting about bore no affinity to the Christian God by any amplitude of the imagination. Further, if everybody knew innately that there was just such a God, and alone that God, afresh why accept hundreds of added religions arise up with acutely differing aberration on the affair of deities? How did they arise and evolve? And if we all innately apperceive that God exists, what’s the point in sending out missionaries and putting Bibles in auberge rooms?

If you altercate that there are added gods that charge to be taken into consideration, able-bodied there’s a accessible acknowledgment for that too. There are no added gods according to Bruggencate (the Bible differs on this point in abundant accommodation and verses), just idols and acceptance that added ‘idols’ abide is annual and that’s an complete boycott because God, who you in fact apperceive exists, says so.

But allegedly if you don’t apperceive that God exists afresh you accept in fact and advisedly suppressed this complete bit of complete ability accustomed to you (presumably by God Himself) for one angry or amiss acumen or other.

If you accept even bisected a rational apperception to anticipate aboriginal thoughts with afresh I anticipate one can calmly abolish Sye Ten Bruggencate. But don’t yield my chat for it. Watch Bruggencate bluster and babble and all but cream at the aperture in debates, interviews and lectures on YouTube. Wow!

oooooOOOOOooooo

God In The Bible

One of the added antic facets involving the God Hypothesis is that during the era area all those Biblical contest were allegedly unfolding, Australia was populated; Africa (south of the equator) was populated; the Americas were populated; Asia was populated; Northern Europe was busy and Russia was populated. Yet, an declared omni-present God [and after on, Jesus] in fact abandoned these regions and their populations. So the accessible cessation is that God was just a fabulous apparatus by the Near East and Middle East locals, admitting hardly acquired in abstraction from the bounded apostolic mythologies that preceded the God Hypothesis. Nothing new there. Every busy arena on the apple during Biblical times (and generally before) developed their own non-Biblical cast of canon and associated deities and no specific arena can logically affirmation to accompaniment that they accept complete affirmation to apostolic accuracy and that all abroad that originates from added regions is fabulous by comparison. And just to add insult to injury, neither Father, Son nor Angelic Ghost has been sighted now for bags of years – oops.

oooooOOOOOooooo

In Defence of Santa

Obviously Santa Claus isn’t real, yet you’d be complete harder apprenticed to in fact prove that to the accomplishment of anybody abroad on this planet. So arguing adjoin that rather non-provable proof, just for the annual of argument…

Santa is real. You can column complete concrete belletrist in complete concrete mailboxes to Santa himself. You can’t address and column belletrist to allegorical persons.

We’ve all apparent pictures of Santa captivation a canteen of a able-bodied accepted bendable alcohol and aback this able-bodied accepted bendable alcohol is in fact real, able-bodied Santa accept to be complete too by association.

There are millions of photographs of Santa with (for example) accouchement sitting in his lap and dozens of movies starring Santa. “Photography is truth. Cinema is accuracy at twenty-four times per second” (Jean-Luc Godard).

Santa has an accustomed complete almanac traveling aback abounding centuries. I’ve even apparent a non-fictional adventures of Santa in the bookstores.

Ask your archetypal WASP 5-year-old, or for that amount about any 5-year-old if Santa is real. You apperceive the acknowledgment you’ll get, and parents will reinforce the child’s answer. I beggarly on Xmas Day kids will acquisition presents beneath the Xmas timberline with Santa’s name on the allowance tag. What added affidavit do you charge to authorize Santa’s bona-fides?

There are millions of Xmas cards with images of Santa on them. You can buy all address of sorts of Xmas kitsch with Santa’s angel on them; even Santa masks for use on Halloween.

You can see Santa continuing on the artery corners accession for charities. You can accommodated and accost Santa in the advance up to Xmas in administration food and in arcade malls. Santa answers to the name “Santa” and there are signage posts pointing the way to Santa.

But how you ask can Santa possibly do what Santa does on Xmas Eve? Isn’t that physically impossible? No, all things are accessible in the branch of the abnormal and Santa is in fact a abnormal getting who is complete and can adjure MAGIC to achieve his Xmas Eve feats.

Further, Santa is in fact all-knowing too. That’s because he keeps a annual and checks it alert so he knows if you’ve been annoying or nice – so be acceptable for advantage sake!

And finally, Santa, by all accounts, is way, way, way added omni-benevolent, all-loving, all-just, and all-merciful than any god, accurately God. If you’re a 5-year-old, what’s God done for you lately? Finally, I’ve never heard it said that Santa condones stoning accouchement to afterlife or absolution afar bears on them.

oooooOOOOOooooo

What Can Science Say About God’s Accurate Literacy?

Since the Bible is declared to be God’s angelic word, afresh contest in the Bible reflect God’s affairs and of advance His angelic word. If some of those contest abatement aural the branch of science (like aural the concrete and biological sciences) afresh God is accountable at atomic in allotment to what science has to say about these ‘scientific’ Biblical events.

The Bible is in fact true, and accordingly accept to be 100% scientifically accurate as able-bodied because the Bible is the chat of God (2 Timothy 3: 16). If you absorb that hook, band and sinker afresh you absorb the afterward claims that I’m abiding able concrete and biological scientists would yield some austere affair with.

Starting with the concrete sciences:

*Life, the Cosmos and aggregate created in just six canicule almost 6000 years ago.

*The acclimation of the creations in Genesis 1 is in fact at allowance with what science has discovered. Genesis would accept us accept that the Earth was created afore the Sun and the stars.

*Forty canicule and nights of accepted rain.

*A accepted flood for which there is no evidence.

*Noah’s Ark – and how did kangaroos get to and from the Ark?

*Alchemy – A woman getting angry into a colonnade of salt.

*A non-consuming afire backcountry that defies basal chemistry.

*The departing of the Red (Reed) Sea.

*Manna from heaven.

*Trumpets and shouting alarming the bedrock walls of Jericho down.

*The Sun & Moon allowable to angle still in the sky, and accomplishing so.

*Walking on water.

*More abracadabra – axis baptize into wine.

*The bewitched multiplication of loaves and fishes.

*Unexplained hours of black (during the crucifixion).

Let’s not carelessness the biological sciences:

*Adam was created from just apparent dust.

*Eve was created from a macho (Adam’s) rib – accordingly Eve should accept been male.

*We accept a serpent / snake that talks.

*There’s beastly lifespans in balance of 900 years.

*Bats are articular as birds.

*Death to all of the age-old Egyptian aboriginal born.

*Over 600,000 bodies abnormality aimlessly about in the wilderness for forty years.

*Becoming abundant at 90 years of age.

*A talking donkey.

*The accord amid hair breadth and concrete strength.

*Jonah’s whale-of-a-tale of getting in the ‘whale’ for three canicule and complete to acquaint the tale.

*All address of awe-inspiring and admirable abominable capricious creatures including the four-winged cherubim, the six-winged seraphim, the cockatrice (or basilisk), the dragon, a aerial horse, locusts (but a lot of in fact not your accustomed garden variety), the behemoth, lambs with horns, giants (the Nephilim), the satyr, unicorns, the leviathan, sea monsters, and a awe-inspiring blended barbarian that arises from the sea in Revelation 13: 1-2.

So if the Bible is God’s angelic chat afresh God has no apperception of the laws, attempt and relationships in and of the sciences He apparently created. On the added hand, if the Bible was accounting by bodies for bodies based on the accepted accurate understandings – additional a apparent dosage of aesthetic authorization – and articulacy of those times, afresh things are far added coherent.

In conclusion, I anticipate that science has an abominable lot to say about God, God’s angelic chat and what was declared in 2 Timothy 3: 16. Don’t you? Now are you traveling to put your assurance in hundreds of geographically abandoned and alien authors who apparently were just herders and farmers with little complete academic apprenticeship or accurate literacy; bearding authors who cobbled calm these Biblical texts (some of which were after rejected) over abounding hundreds of years; authors all active over bags of years ago – OR – avant-garde day abominable accomplished able scientists who accept to get their plan peer-reviewed by added abominable accomplished able scientists?

Addendum: There’s at atomic one added acclaimed accurate aberration in the New Testament, and that is the ‘Star’ of Bethlehem. It’s bleedingly accessible based on the abandoned description in Matthew 2 that the ‘star’ can’t be ample aback it ends up continuing still which it can’t do if the Earth rotates, so for all applied purposes one may as able-bodied alarm it a UFO and be done with it.

Speaking of stars, the Bible relates that in the End Times the “stars will abatement from heaven” (Matthew 24: 29; Mark 13: 25; Revelation 6: 13) which ability accept seemed believable to the abundant army aback in Biblical times, but is complete nonsense in our avant-garde astronomy.

Why do or why should atheists achieve their agnostic credibility of appearance and put them out into the accessible aboveboard for all the apple to see? What motivates them afar from getting assertive of their own worldviews? Here’s a leash of reasons.

Religious behavior accept acquired over the millennia massive abuse to both beastly and beastly species. Annihilation that can abetment in abbreviation those sets of behavior and the numbers who ascendancy them and appropriately the consistent atrocities done in the name of those behavior by those bodies can alone be a complete affair or achievement.

Many countries accept allowable their civic cast of adoration as the complete law of the acreage (i.e. – the Middle East; locations of Asia, etc.) and added countries like the United States are aggravating to achieve the same. There are abounding on the religious appropriate ancillary of American backroom who are hell angled on catastrophe the break of abbey and accompaniment and axis the USA into a theocracy and appropriately advance their religious behavior and ethics down anybody else’s throats. I rather doubtable but can’t in fact yet prove that the accepted American Veep (Pence) is a political case in point. That’s gotta end.

Anything that decreases acceptance systems that arise added important than the complete accuracy of those acceptance systems in favor of acceptance systems based on complete affirmation is a advantageous objective.

oooooOOOOOooooo

Religious Acceptance Systems Adjoin Truth

Since I’ve aloft the affair anon above, I charge explain why generally acceptance systems are added important than the complete accuracy of those beliefs. This phenomena, by the way, isn’t just bedfast to the religious-minded. We apparently all accept at atomic one acceptance we’d adhere tenaciously to even if we were presented with analytic arguments why it was incorrect. Anyway, the focus actuality is on religious beliefs. We could calmly ascendancy those religious beliefs, adverse to rational arguments and affirmation to the contrary, because (and I don’t pretend that this is an all-embracing list):

*We ability get a faculty of abundance and abundance and comfort inherent in those beliefs.

*We ability feel the charge to butt at straws – just in case.

*Perhaps our declared acceptance systems drag us and accord us added cachet in the eyes of others (family, neighbours, friends, adolescent workers, etc.) and in the accepted association at large.

*Perhaps our acceptance systems accord us an added faculty of worth, say by accidental to the accumulating bowl every Sunday or contrarily bedfast in some accommodation aural the religious establishment’s structure.

*Perhaps we accept invested so abundant time and accomplishment and money into establishing and announcement our behavior that it’s just absurd to do a 180 amount turnaround.

Does the aloft absolve assertive after evidence? IMHO no. Acutely accurate believers will accede to disagree.

oooooOOOOOooooo

Chin-Wagging In The Bible Negates The Bible

The aloft section of evocative affirmation that the Bible is just a plan of authentic complete fiction is that it contains, like all acceptable works of fiction, massive amounts of articulate dialogues and monologues with cipher anytime articular as getting present and accounted for as scribes autograph down these conversations, these duets and arias. In that faculty there are added parallels amid the Bible and say the Iliad and Odyssey, the Epic of Gilgamesh (all complete fiction), or even the declared plays of Shakespeare (some of which is complete fiction) than with say any nonfictional annual of age-old Greek history or even a adventures of Cleopatra. There are no monologues or dialogues accustomed in the closing because there’s no almanac of there getting complete articulate conversations that were accounting down in complete time and which accept survived to the present day.

I beggarly we accept no abstraction what Alexander the Great, any of the Roman emperors, Socrates*, Erik the Red, Leif Erikson, Pythagoras, Pericles, or Euclid said in any articulate conversations they had. Yet we ‘know’ what Adam and Eve said. Really?

We accept no abstraction what Kheops (Cheops), Thutmose III, Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tutankhamun, Rameses the Great, or Cleopatra VII anytime uttered, and that applies to all of the age-old Egyptian Kings and Pharaohs. Yet we ‘know’ what an bearding Pharaoh in the Biblical Book of Exodus said. Really?

Now we apperceive what these bona-fide age-old complete bodies in fact wrote down, or what they formally instructed their scribes to address down, but as to what they in fact said, as in accustomed conversations, or what they may accept decrepit to themselves, we apperceive not.

*Though Plato invented abounding dialogues that Socrates had with added characters in adjustment to allegorize his assorted abstract issues and points. In a agnate way, Hollywood films or novels that affection the appearance Cleopatra or Alexander the Abundant acutely cover invented dialogues on their behalf.

oooooOOOOOooooo

What Does Not Constitute Affirmation For God’s Existence

Faith or belief. If you accept acceptance or acceptance afresh that acceptance or acceptance is based after acceptable evidence. If you apperceive something, afresh apparently that is based on complete affirmation that you can allotment with others.

Personal experiences. Claimed adventures are just that, personal. They back no affirmation apropos to that acquaintance to anyone abroad who hasn’t aggregate that experience, an absurd accident since, by definition, the acquaintance was personal. Further, airy adventures are not bedfast to God, Jesus or the Abstinent Mary. All address of added deities from Osiris to Shiva to Apollo and Odin accept been alone experienced. That aswell applies to extraterrestrials as able-bodied as accepting visions and communications with the deceased.

The Bible. The Bible is just addition angelic book, one of abounding such angelic books. The Bible is aswell just a book and anyone can address words in a book. Libraries and bookstores are abounding of such books, generally declared fiction. While the Bible is IMHO complete fiction (like “Gone with the Wind”) there is no complete apart absolute affirmation for any of the declared abnormal contest as accompanying in Biblical texts.

Metaphysical, theological, abstract arguments. These are in fact just arguments, authentic anticipation experiments, and accept never had any satisfactory resolutions – at atomic to the accomplishment of all who argue. It’s on the added duke harder to altercate adjoin evidence. One can altercate about which approach of force best explains gravity, but cipher argues that force doesn’t in fact exist.

Appeal to authority. Ascendancy abstracts aren’t infallible. They can be wrong. Even the Pope can’t in fact prove that the Christian God exists.

Majority rules. Even if a billion bodies accept in a absurd thing, it is still a absurd thing. Billions accept believed that the Sun goes about the Earth, but that acceptance arrangement has now gone by the boards.

Need for agency. If faced with a mystery, bodies generally resort to an account by an agent. The accepted archetype is: lightning is a mystery, accordingly Thor / Zeus done it. Those that adduce that lightning is the artefact of Thor’s bang and/or Zeus and his thunderbolts would be accepted to aftermath some added abundant than just “Thor did it” or that “Zeus did it”. They just ability be accepted to authenticate that Thor and/or Zeus aboriginal existed and secondly had the bureau and attitude to bung lightning bolts around.

God of the Gaps: Just because some phenomena hasn’t yet been absolutely explained (like area something in fact came from) doesn’t automatically beggarly God done it. God is not the absence position and if you don’t apperceive something afresh your acknowledgment is “I don’t know”.